Characterizing cardiac involvement in chronic kidney disease using CMR—a systematic review

Purpose of Review: The aim of the review was to identify and describe recent advances (over the last 3 years) in cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) imaging in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD). We conducted a literature review in line with current guidelines. Recent Findings: The authors identified 22 studies. Patients with CKD had left ventricular global and regional dysfunction and adverse remodeling. Stress testing with CMR revealed a reduced stress-response in CKD patients. Native T1 relaxation times (as a surrogate markers of fibrosis) are elevated in CKD patients, proportional to disease duration. Patients with CKD have reduced strain magnitudes and reduced aortic distensibility. Summary: CMR has diagnostic utility to identify and characterize cardiac involvement in this patient group. A number of papers have described novel findings over the last 3 years, suggesting that CMR has potential to become more widely used in studies in this patient group

A COMPARISON OF THE FORECASTING ACCURACY OF PREDICTION MARKETS AND EXPERT PRACTITIONERS (39)

Creating accurate forecasts to inform planning processes and organisational decision making is a perennial organisational challenge and the focus of a substantial body of research in management science, information systems and related disciplines. Prediction markets are a relatively novel Group Decision Support System (GDSS) which can be applied to this problem. This paper presents a study which compares the forecasting performance of a prediction market to a small group of experts

Molecular Diagnostics in Advanced NSCLC: Trying to Maximize a Non-Ideal Situation

10.1097/JTO.0b013e31811f479dJournal of Thoracic Oncology28782

An alternative approach for calculating the SAR damping ratio of verified oil slicks

Source: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/conhome/1000307/all-proceedings.The damping ratio is a calculated feature that measures the contrast between oil-slicked water and the open ocean in SAR data. To implement the damping ratio, the current literature suggests estimating the open water backscatter by taking strips of undefined width across the range direction, obtaining the damping ratio as a function of incidence angle. We show in this paper that the method proposed in the literature can be improved by instead sampling open water pixels randomly. The method is tested on RADARSAT-2 quad-polarimetric SAR imagery of a verified oil slick acquired during the 2013 NOFO oilon-water exercise conducted in the North Sea. The results suggest that deviations in the derived damping ratio encountered by implementing the method proposed in the literature can be reduced from of order 100 – 10-1 to 10-3

An investigation on the damping ratio of marine oil slicks in synthetic aperture radar imagery

The damping ratio has recently been used to indicate the relative internal oil thickness within oil slicks observed in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery. However, there exists no well-defined and evaluated methodology for calculating the damping ratio. In this study, we review prior work regarding the damping ratio and outline its theoretical and practical aspects. We show that the most often used methodology yields damping ratio values that differ, in some cases significantly, for the same scene. Three alternative methods are tested on multi-frequency data sets of verified oil slicks acquired from DLR's F-SAR instrument, NASA's Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) and Sentinel-1. All methods yielded similar results regarding relative thickness variations within slick. The proposed damping ratio derivation methods were found to be sensitive to the proportion of oil covered pixels versus open water pixels in the azimuth direction, as well as to the scene size in question. We show that the fully automatable histogram method provides the most consistent results even under challenging conditions. Comparisons between optical imagery and derived damping ratio values using F-SAR data show good agreement between the relatively thicker oil slick areas for the two different types of sensors

Hopelessness the ‘active ingredient’? : associations of hopelessness and depressive symptoms with Interleukin-6.

Objective: Previous research has revealed a relationship of depressive symptoms and hopelessness with cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) which are associated with elevated levels of interleukin-6 (IL-6). The objective of this study was to explore whether depressive symptoms and hopelessness are independent predictors of IL-6 levels. Method: Hopelessness, depressive symptoms, and IL-6 were measured in 45 Swedish adults (26 women and 19 men; age range: 31-65 years). Two separated linear regressions were conducted with hopelessness and depressive symptoms serving as individual predictors of IL-6. Another regression analysis examined whether the two predictors predict IL-6 when controlling for each other. The regression coefficients of the models with one predictor and with both predictors were compared. Results: As predicted, after adjusting for age, BMI, illness, smoking, and gender, more depressive symptoms and more hopelessness predicted higher IL-6 levels in independent regressions. When controlling for each other, hopelessness, but not depressive symptoms, predicted IL-6 levels. Finally, when controlling for hopelessness, the regression between depressive symptoms and IL-6 level was significantly reduced; however, there was no significant change in the regression between hopelessness and IL-6 level when controlling for depressive symptoms. Conclusions: Thus, these results suggest that depressive symptoms and hopelessness are not independent predictors of IL-6 levels. Future research should explore the interplay of hopelessness and depressive symptoms on other risk factors of CVDs

Novel Inducers of the Envelope Stress Response BaeSR in Salmonella Typhimurium: BaeR Is Critically Required for Tungstate Waste Disposal

The RpoE and CpxR regulated envelope stress responses are extremely important for SalmonellaTyphimurium to cause infection in a range of hosts. Until now the role for BaeSR in both the Salmonella Typhimurium response to stress and its contribution to infection have not been fully elucidated. Here we demonstrate stationary phase growth, iron and sodium tungstate as novel inducers of the BaeRregulon, with BaeR critically required for Salmonella resistance to sodium tungstate. We show that functional overlap between the resistance nodulation-cell division (RND) multidrug transporters, MdtA, AcrD and AcrB exists for the waste disposal of tungstate from the cell. We also point to a role for enterobactinsiderophores in the protection of enteric organisms from tungstate, akin to the scenario in nitrogen fixing bacteria. Surprisingly, BaeR is the first envelope stress response pathway investigated in S. Typhimurium that is not required for murine typhoid in either ityS or ityR mouse backgrounds. BaeR is therefore either required for survival in larger mammals such as pigs or calves, an avian host such as chickens, or survival out with the host altogether where Salmonella and related enterics must survive in soil and water